THE FLAG SONG / SNAKE RIVER SINGERS



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PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT

Featuring

Verlon Gould

Lead Singer of the Snake River Singers

Sho-Ban Drum Group

A Program originally produced & Broadcast

on KGNU 88.5 FM Boulder, CO in 1981

Snake River Singers - Verlon Gould

VERLON GOULD: Teaser Intro: We got the name Snake River from the river that runs into the ocean, and the way we see it, it never runs out. It goes into the ocean and it comes back, by the rain, and it comes back to the ground, then it comes back into the ocean again. So, we're in a recycling stage, something like that.

ANNOUNCER: Post the colors, post the colors up here in front of the stand. I want to recognize the flag carriers this afternoon, they're from Sand Creek Post 1864, right here in Denver. Snake River singers, you have the Flag Song.

TWO ELK: What Tribe is it?

VERLON GOULD: Sho-Ban Tribe. Its consisted of two tribes. The Shoshones are originally from Wyoming and the Bannocks are originally from northern Idaho, but then they got blended in together. Into where all the tribes just inter-mixed among each other.

TWO ELK: I'm speaking with Verlon Gould, and he's the lead singer, and that's the drum from Ft. Hall, Idaho. Could you tell us a little bit about your drum and how it got started?

VERLON GOULD: Well, we started out as a real young group. It started out by my sister, but then they started having their problems, so, me and my friends, we come in and we decided to help them out. There's about four other guys that come in.

We started in the house and our dad was sitting there. He says, "well, you guys seem to be having. you guys have the right idea about the drumming. But then there's some tricks to it that a lot of these drummers don't realize. That go along with singing too. The drumming, you have to have that special beat, or that even tempo is what they call it. And once you get the beat going, you make sure that the song blends in with the drum, cause that's the main ingredient there.

ANNOUNCER: We sing together, we go to pow-wows together, and we also go out and help other colleges in our community here in the state, and throughout the country. And Chuck has been doing that too. He goes to many of the universities and colleges, giving lectures and talking about our Indian ways. Trying to help our fellow white man, to understand who we are and what we want, so we can get along better in this world.

VERLON GOULD: Then voice control is important too. You get to where you're setting your voice to all the other singers too, because if you don't have no help, then you know, it's pretty hard to sing a song and carry it through all the way to the end, and put in all the special verses. Putting the special verses in, is when you. It's just like breathing, you have to breathe, and then you use that up, then you breathe again. Then you cut into sections like that.

TWO ELK: The breathing fits with the song.

VERLON GOULD: Well that's the main importance right there. If you're, like if you took off on a song and tried to last as long as your wind could go you know, your voice is going to go maybe about half way. Then the songs are meant to be sung right. And the drumming, if your drumming is off too, and it throws all the other drummers off, you're not going to blend that special quality that the song has.

TWO ELK: That's pretty interesting.

ANNOUNCER: Through that we're trying to help our young people and that's why we have this pow-wow here. We want our young people to know about the ways of our people, our forefathers, so that they can carry on when they grow up. So, that's the emphasis behind this club and this organization, that we want to try to educate our people here. our young people. So they'll know, not only the tools of the trade to get along in this white man's world, but also to learn our Indian ways, too. So that they can take part and have an active part in participating in many pow-wows and other cultural activities.

TWO ELK: So, when you're doing these Pow-wows in the United States, you pick up a lot of different songs, what are some of the kind of songs there? Honoring song is one of them, what are the other kinds?

VERLON GOULD: There's a lot of round dance songs that we pick up. We listen to the songs about four or five times and we make sure we get all the special verses. All the lead. The lead is very important, if you blow the lead, you blow the whole song, and you sit there and you learn that until you get it right. We usually practice about twice a week, to where the song sounds good to us. It's got to sound good to the person that's singing it, otherwise, people out there are going to think, you know, this song is good but they're not singing it right.

The feeling is not going to go into the song. See, that's where a lot of these singers, they just go out there, and they shout it out. But when they shout it out, you got to shout something out, the song out, and then you got to hit the right notes too. There's a lot of high notes and a lot of low notes that you got to hit. If you hit them just right, you've got a perfect sound, a perfect song there.

ANNOUNCER: We try to help each other put on the pow-wows that we have in this community. We want to thank you again for coming down and helping us out. Your attendance means a lot to all of us. We worked hard, tried to put on a little program here, everybody throughout the country has supported us. We've got the buffalo from the Sioux tribe, up in Pine Ridge. We want those people to know that we appreciate what they've done for us. So, everybody got a taste of the buffalo yesterday, we hope. Next year, we hope to even have a greater turnout and a greater pow-wow. This afternoon, we have a few little things that we want to give out to our friends and our visitors, and I'd like to call on a few names at this time.

VERLON GOULD: Like right now we're recording from these other drums, and sometimes we may change the song a little bit to where we could sing it our style. But then some other drum come in and change it to their style, see, Then we just keep doing that, and then the song just keeps going from drum to drum, year to year. Most of these songs are maybe about thirty or forty years old, but then they're just coming back up like. it goes like this. Like in a circle. The sacred circle. That's the way most of the Indian ways are.

TWO ELK: So, it's the same as the idea behind the name of the drum?

VERLON GOULD: Yeah, see. the name of the drum we got, that was originated by my mom and my grandma, when they was thinking it over.

They said that the river was the life of all, of all living things. We just took that in consideration and told. well, we agreed that we was going to use the name, and use it in different parts of the country, not to where to make ourselves big, but to make other people happy with our songs. Make them feel good. We sing, sing from the heart, and usually the drum beat goes right into the feelings of the people, and it makes them feel good.

ANNOUNCER: Snake River Singers. Takoja Singers have donated a hundred dollars to the drum that came the furthest distance, and that donation will go to the Snake River Singers! Next drum we're calling, MGM from Norman, Oklahoma.

TWO ELK: You did the...your drum did the second honoring song that, that was with the grand entry. Could you tell us a little bit about what kind of honoring song that was?

VERLON GOULD: Well, that's a song that, that different tribes have different names for. The Sioux, they use it for their flag song. We use it as a Flag song and a honoring song. It really has no beginning. Nobody knows where it came from. Some say it comes from a, a veteran that come over seas. His troop was wiped out, but then it was blessed to him.

It wasn't sung to him from a different human being, it was given to him from a spirit, or something like that, and the legend goes that, he was coming back, and then it hit him. He brought it back to the tribe, and the people there, they blessed him with that. They had a big ceremony for him, and they said that, "We're going to use this in memory of the boys that went over across the seas. That shed their blood for our country." So, thats where the song come from, and it's supposed to make the people feel better.

SNAKE RIVER SINGERS - THE FLAG SONG

TWO ELK: That's pretty good. You do a lot of pow-wows?

VERLON GOULD: I try to do it year round.

TWO ELK: Yeah? Year round, not just in the summer?

VERLON GOULD: No, it's twenty four hours a day sometimes.

TWO ELK: So, you go all over the country, western United States and Canada?

VERLON GOULD: Canada, western United States, yeah.

TWO ELK: Thanks a lot Verlon.

VERLON GOULD: Your welcome.

ANNOUNCER: also at this time, we need that boy that was carrying the roving mic, come on over here and receive a donation...We need the Head staff, Head man dancer, Head Woman dancer, the Head Little Boy dancer, the Head little Girl dancer...We would also like to call the Arena Director...

( R. Two Elk, Jan. 2002 (word count 1,799 - 2/23/02)

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